


"I Looked at Him, and I Saw Myself"

by dearestghost



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Angst, At Least I Finished Something, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I wrote this instead of getting literally any work done today, Protective Stoick the Vast, Protective Toothless (How to Train Your Dragon), Stoick's POV, enjoy, hiccup's here but he's unconscious the whole time lmao, it's just cuteness, just some missing scenes all rolled into one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:40:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29972664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearestghost/pseuds/dearestghost
Summary: Takes place during the first HTTYD movie. While Hiccup's unconscious for three weeks, Stoick takes care of his son. Toothless wants to help, too, but Stoick isn't totally sure yet if he can really trust a dragon.
Relationships: Gobber the Belch & Stoick the Vast, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Stoick the Vast, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Toothless
Kudos: 41





	"I Looked at Him, and I Saw Myself"

**Author's Note:**

> Slightly inspired by Roxyjaws' "Getting Help" story, which y'all should also check out while you're at it. 
> 
> I've wanted to write something to cover this three weeks' gap in the first movie for years and finally got around to it. Enjoy!
> 
> Stoick's POV.

I made it back home just before sunset. At the top of the hill where my home stood, I turned back to give the village one more glance. Beneath a sinking orange sky, dragons roosted on the sides of peaked rooftops. 

I pushed down the instinctive jolt of fear that burst in my chest. The dragons were our friends now, or would be soon. But even after a week spent helping the villagers train them, the sight of them never failed to alarm me at first. 

In fact, as I stepped over the threshold of my house, another dragon appeared to spur my heart into action. 

“Toothless, out! You’re not allowed in—” 

I’d strode inside, but I stopped when I could see the beast fully. It wasn’t just in the house—it was curled up on Hiccup’s bed, which I’d moved downstairs into the main room. Hiccup, however, wasn’t there. 

In a feverish turn, my blood went from hot with fury to ice-cold. My fists clenched themselves white as I threw my gaze rapidly around the big room, eyeing every dark corner. “What’ve you done with him?” 

As if in response, Toothless lifted up a wing that it had curled around itself. 

Hiccup was clutched to Toothless’s body, still wrapped in the dragon’s other wing. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was deep. He looked fine—just asleep, like always. 

Oh. I let out a breath. “Toothless…”

It was already tucking its wing back around Hiccup with all the tenderness of a mother. But I wanted Hiccup where I could keep an eye on him. What if he woke up, surrounded by darkness and unable to move, and panicked? Or worse, what if the dragon hurt him again, however accidentally? The beast had already taken his leg, and that was bad enough. “Toothless, let him go.” 

The dragon narrowed its eyes at me. When I tugged at its wing, a rumble warbled out of its throat. The message was clear: Don’t. 

“Listen, you beast—” I cut myself off mid-snap. Better not to piss it off any more. “Toothless, I just want to have Hiccup where I can see him. I’ll let you stay in here with him if you just let go of him.” 

It held my stare, unmoving. 

“Look, you can trust me. It’s not as if I haven’t spent all day teaching everybody in the village how to accept your presence here. I’m on your side.” 

I’d half-expected it not to understand a word, but it just made a disapproving noise and opened its wings, letting go of Hiccup. 

I shooed it off the bed. Thank Thor; that had somehow worked. I rearranged Hiccup under the covers and went to make dinner. Once that was finished, my nightly ritual of looking after him could begin. 

At first, after the fight at the dragon nest was over, once we’d all made it home and had Gothi fix up Hiccup’s leg, I hadn’t left his bedside for more than a few minutes at a time. I fed him broth twice a day and changed his bandages almost as frequently—in his condition an infection might easily be the end of him—but most of my time was spent waiting and praying to the gods that this horrible in-between state of his would cease. 

After a week had passed, nothing had changed, but Gobber arrived at my door with Hiccup’s new leg. 

“It’s springy.” He gripped the top of the mechanism and pressed it against the floor so I could see how the metal sank accommodatingly under the applied weight. “Lot more forgiving than a hunk of wood.” 

“Right.” 

“I’m thinking I ought to make myself one, too. Otherwise, I might start to get jealous of him,” he joked as he fixed the prosthetic to Hiccup’s stump. 

I copied Gobber’s smile, but he surely could see how forced it was. “Thanks. I’m glad of your help, and I’m sure he’ll feel the same.” Never mind how, even if Hiccup did wake up—a hope that each new dawn that brought no change put strain on—he’d never be the same. His dragon had saved him, yes, but it’d cost him part of his body in the process. 

“Give him time to heal,” Gobber said, apparently reading my thoughts in my face all too clearly. “He’ll come back to us. He’s a scrawny bit of meat, sure, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t strong. That performance of his at the nest proved that at least.” 

“Aye.” That fateful night wouldn’t be his last. I wouldn’t let it be. “I know.” 

“But you’re forgetting you’re not just a father.” Gobber put his hand on my arm, drawing my eyes away from Hiccup’s lax face. “You’re a chief, too. And the whole village is going crazy with all of this new dragons-are-our-friends thing. Let me look after him for a little while today so you can take care of your other responsibilities.” 

I couldn’t deny that I did have other things to do, very pressing things, as much as I hated to admit it. I’d had an increasing number of visitors at my door every day that week, and though they all understood why I had to turn them away and leave them to deal with their problems on their own, I couldn’t keep ignoring my job. The village’s relationship with dragons had turned from antagonistic to tentatively friendly literally overnight. Although the kids were doing a decent job introducing people to the tameability of dragons, more than one fight had broken out already, and the overwhelming feeling seemed to be confusion and reluctance to connect. If I didn’t shoulder my role as leader again soon, things between us and the dragons might never improve. 

Well, if anyone was going to take care of Hiccup in my stead, I would be happy if it was Gobber. “Do you know how to change his bandages, or should I—” 

“You’re asking me?” Gobber raised his eyebrows with another smile. “As if there’s anyone in this village ’sides Gothi who’s more qualified to tend to an amputation!” He burst into cackling laughter. 

Hilarity tugged at my chest, and I laughed, too. He was my best friend, and I had laughed so many times along with him that I couldn’t witness him doing so without doing the same. 

And I was glad of the reminder, truthfully; if Gobber could survive multiple amputations and still take on life with the liveliness that he did, then certainly Hiccup could pull through after this. 

That had been a little over a week ago, and I still held onto that hope, despite the fact that Hiccup was still unconscious. He had started making noises, though; I’d initially felt my heart rise in my chest and beat quickly, watching to see if he’d finally open his eyes, but my heart dropped even further in my chest than before when I realized he wasn’t waking up—he was crying out in unconscious pain. 

The one blessing this seemingly endless sleep could bestow on him was relief from pain, but he couldn’t even have that. The first time I heard him groan, his face scrunching in pain, all of the self-restraint I had had broken. I wrapped my fingers around his limp hand and squeezed it. I knelt on the floor, dropping my head beside him on the bed and sobbing for so long that, by the time I had stopped, my face ached and my legs were numb. 

But it hadn’t ended there; the sounds came almost daily, most often at night. I slept so poorly now that even Hiccup’s quiet whimpers were enough to wake me up, and I would get up from bed to be by his side and ride out my pain along with his. 

Sometimes I’d pick him up and cradle him in my arms, just as I’d done when he’d been a baby and had night terrors. It would calm him somewhat, but the agonized tension would still stay in his face for hours. 

Tonight was no different. As darkness set in outside the windows, I sat in my wooden chair by the fire with Hiccup resting uneasily in my arms. 

“This is the most time we’ve spent together in…years,” I said. I’d taken to talking to him since Gothi had told me that it sometimes helped bring people back in cases like this. “Kind of funny, isn’t it?” 

Of course, he didn’t reply. The firelight played over the skin of his face, an echo of the massive flames that had left the still-healing burns there. How long had he been conscious as he fell? Had he had time to feel the heat of the fire searing him, the pain of his own dragon biting clean through his flesh? 

I shook the thought away. The future was a better topic. “When you wake up, I’ll take you hunting, and I’ll teach you how to heft an axe.” Wait—all that he’d done to prove that he didn’t need to be muscular or violent to be a warrior, and here I was forgetting that. 

“Never mind that, actually. I’ll have you teach me how to ride a dragon of my own. How’s that for father-son time?” I smiled; it was a ridiculous idea, even if it was likely to come true. But how? How the Hel would I sit comfortably on a dragon, much less ride it? How would I be able to look into those reptilian eyes and feel anything but rage? 

Well, I had crossed into that unfamiliar territory with one dragon already. I looked automatically at Toothless, who had curled up again, this time in the corner of the huge room, just out of the reach of the fire’s glow. Its eyes were closed. 

Hiccup cried out softly, and all my attention went to him again. I put a hand to his face and gently swept my thumb over his blistered cheek. “I’m here, son. You’re alright now.” 

My gaze flickered up toward a peripheral movement. Toothless had risen to its feet. Its green cat’s-eyes were looking away at Hiccup, and there was something like worry in its expression. 

Hiccup whimpered again, louder this time, and Toothless leaped across the room. I jumped up, tightening my arms around Hiccup, but the dragon stood still in front of me, reaching out its nose to gingerly sniff and then nuzzle the side of Hiccup’s face. It exhaled hot breath, lifting the hair that fell over Hiccup’s forehead. 

Whimpers kept coming from deep in Hiccup’s throat. Toothless made a sound that I might’ve mistaken for a growl if it didn’t sound so sad. It met my gaze again, its ears drooping back behind its head. I had the strong feeling that if it could cry, it would be. 

Maybe it—he—felt just as useless as I did. 

“Okay,” I sighed, loosening my grip on Hiccup. “You can take a turn trying to calm him, I guess.” 

I laid Hiccup back down on his bed, and Toothless jumped up with him, gathering Hiccup up with his legs and pressing him into his underbelly before folding his wings around him. 

I pulled up my chair beside them and waited, but Hiccup didn’t make a sound. After a while, I gestured for Toothless to lift his wings so I could check on Hiccup. 

He was sleeping soundly. His brow had unfurrowed into softness, and he was quiet. 

Toothless tucked his wings back over him, looking at me with an expression that said, “See?” 

I sat back in my chair. The fire was dying, casting the room into dimness, and my tiredness had consolidated into a headache behind my eyes. The village would be clamoring at my doorstep in the morning, bright and early as usual, and if I wanted to deal with them without being in a haze of exhaustion, I needed to get some more sleep. I waited for the pang of guilt for having to leave Hiccup alone to go back to bed, but it didn’t come. 

I wasn’t leaving him alone; I could trust my son with Toothless. 

Biting back the long-ingrained instinct that told me not to, I laid a hand on Toothless’s head. “Keep him comfortable for me.” 

Toothless blinked and flicked his ears as if to say, “Of course,” and without any more hesitation, I dragged myself back to bed and fell asleep.


End file.
